Barry Cox is an ambulance liaison assistant for our patient transport service call handling team. He and his colleagues are responsible for taking patient transport service bookings and ensuring that patients receive the right kind of transport to their appointments across the region. Having joined the service in 2014 following a career in the oil and gas industry, Barry said: “I have worked pretty much exclusively within patient transport service as a call handler, assisting with training new recruits, and as an ACE. I’ve also worked alongside my colleagues on our 111 service in a low acuity role.
In 2023/24 our patient transport service completed over 540,000 journeys across the regions hospitals and clinics. Of these, over 463,000 were planned journey’s prepared in advance by our call handling team. An additional approximately 80,000 journeys were unplanned journeys received on the same day as required.
“We take calls from hospitals, GPs, and patients to arrange their transport to appointments and answer their queries about the service they’ll receive. My favourite part of the role is all of the problem solving. We often have to decipher complex booking requests from the hospitals that require a logical thought process, and we also have to have excellent geographical knowledge to keep patients and hospitals abreast of logistical and operational queries.”
Part of the patient transport service call handling role is identifying where a patient may need additional support. For a number of our patients, regular transport from our service is a must in order to get to and from their appointments. They may have mobility needs such as use of a wheelchair, or be unable to drive. The team needs to identify when these patients will need our service and, if required, pass this information on to a team manager who will conduct a patient assessment.
Amy Rosindale is a patient transport service operations manager for our service, and began her career at NEAS in 2007 as part of our patient transport service call handling team for patients in Northumberland. Since then, she has risen through the ranks of the service, spending time in our dispatch and team manager teams before being appointed her current role in 2022. She is responsible for overseeing her team of team managers who conduct patient assessments for the patient transport service. She said: “We do patient assessments in advance of appointments so that we can make sure the right crew and vehicle is arranged to help our patients get to appointments as smoothly as possible. A member of our team will come out to a patients home and see what challenges a crew could face to make sure our planners are able to work around things like tight corners, ramps, or lots of stairs.”
More information about our patient transport service, what to expect when you make a booking, how to travel safely and comfortably, and how to cancel your booking, can be found on our website: https://